My Ex-Husband’s Uncle

The rain had been hitting the lab window for three hours. It sounded like someone throwing handfuls of rice at the glass. I did not mind. I liked it. It made the whole room feel small and safe, like a pocket. The old radiator in the corner clanked every few minutes. It banged like a ghost with a spoon. The room smelled like cold tea, rubber gloves and something sharp I never got used to. My sleeves were pushed up to my elbows. There was blue ink all over my wrists. I had been writing on my own skin again. I do that when I think too fast for paper. It was almost nine at night. Everyone else had gone home hours ago. I was twenty-four years old, alone in a cramped lab above the old botanical wing in Cambridge. I was staring into a microscope like it owed me money. For two years, nothing had worked. Two whole years. I had made hundreds of tiny test batches. Every one of them failed. The little nerve cells in my dishes kept dying, no matter what I did. I used to stand over them and whisper, "Come on. Please. Just live." Tonight, they were not dying. I blinked and looked again. Then I looked a third time, because I did not trust my own eyes. They were still alive. "No way," I whispered. "No, no, no. Don't do that. Don't get my hopes up." I checked the label on the dish. I checked the date. I checked my notes. I even checked that I was looking at the right microscope. It was the right one. It was the right dish. The cells were alive and healthy, and they were just sitting there like nothing special had happened. My heart started to bang against my ribs. I grabbed a pen. My notebook was all the way across the room on the other bench, and I was scared that if I looked away, the cells would change their minds. So I pulled up my sleeve and drew the shape of the molecule right on the back of my hand. Six little rings. Two chains. One tiny, strange tail. I stared at it. It looked like a bug. I started to laugh. It was a shaky, silly laugh, the kind you do when you are too happy and too scared at the same time. "What's so funny?" I jumped so hard I knocked a pipette off the bench. Dr. Rupert Fenwick stood in the doorway. He was my supervisor. He was seventy, and he looked like a scarecrow who had lost a fight with a library. He wore a brown cardigan with a hole in one elbow and a tie covered in tiny pigs. He said his granddaughter gave it to him. I did not believe that for a second. In his hand was a mug of tea. I could tell from here that it was stone cold. "Nothing," I said. "I mean, something. Come here. Please. Quick." "I'm seventy, Imogen. I do not do quick." "Rupert!" He shuffled over. He took his time putting his tea down. He took even longer finding his glasses, which were on top of his head. I stepped aside and let him look. He bent over the microscope. For a long moment, the only sounds were the rain and the radiator. Then he went very, very quiet. "Say something," I said. "Please. You're scaring me." "How long have they been like this?" "Since this afternoon. I've checked three times." "Four," he said. "Check again, with me watching." We did it together. He wrote the numbers down himself, slowly, in his messy writing. When he stood up, he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Say it again," he said. "The part where they don't die." "They don't die." "Say it slowly." "The cells keep going, Rupert." My voice cracked in the middle. "They just keep going." He looked at me then. Really looked at me. I was a skinny girl with ink up to my elbows and a cardigan buttoned wrong, and he stared at me like I had grown a second head. "Do you know what you have done?" he asked softly. "Not yet." "Neither do I." He gave a small, tired smile. "But I know whose name people will be saying in twenty years." My eyes went hot. I looked down at my feet. "Don't," I said. "You'll make me cry, and then the cells will get salt in them." He laughed. It was a real laugh, a big wheezy one that turned into a cough. "Right. Rules," he said, wagging a finger. "You tell nobody. Not your friends, not the cleaner, not the cat. We repeat it five more times, and then we repeat it again. Science is not a magic trick, Imogen. It has to work when nobody is clapping." "Okay." "Promise me." "I promise." "Not even your father." That one hurt a little. "Dad is not going to tell anyone," I said. "He can't even keep a surprise party secret. He cried at his own one." "Promise." I sighed. "Fine. Not even Dad. Until we are sure." He nodded. He patted my shoulder twice, like I was a nervous horse, and shuffled off to find his coat. At the door he stopped. "Go home and sleep, Imogen. You look like a ghost who has lost her job." "Thanks, Rupert." "I mean it. Sleep." Then he was gone. I stood there in the lab for a long time, listening to the rain. I could not sleep. How could I? I packed up slowly. I kept looking back at the microscope, like it might wink at me. I washed my hands, but the ink on my skin would not come off. I decided I did not want it to. I wanted to run through the streets shouting. Instead, I stood at the bench and thought about my dad. He used to say that the best medicine starts with someone who refuses to look away. He said it when I was small, sitting on the kitchen counter eating toast while he got ready for work. He was a hospital doctor for thirty years. He knew the name of every cleaner on the ward. He knew the names of their kids, too. When my mum got sick, he was the one who stayed up all night with her, and he never once looked away. When she died, I was nineteen. He held me in the hallway and said, "We keep going, love. That's all. We just keep going." That was why the words I had said to Fenwick tonight hit me so hard. The cells keep going. I wanted to tell Dad first. Before Fenwick. Before anyone. I could already hear his laugh. That big, warm laugh made a whole hospital ward feel like a kitchen. I pulled out my phone to call him. Then I stopped. It was almost ten. He went to bed early these days. Last Sunday, on our call, he had cut it short. He said he was tired, and his voice sounded funny. A bit slow, like he was walking through wet sand. I had said, "Dad, are you okay?" And he had said, "Right as rain, love. Now go and save the world." I should have pushed. I knew that now, standing there with ink on my hands. I put the phone down. I decided I would go and see him on Saturday. I would bring a cake, and I would tell him everything, and I would make him cry on purpose. That felt like a lovely plan. I pulled on my coat and turned off the lights. I stood in the dark doorway for one last second and looked back at the microscope. I had never felt so awake in my entire life. So this is what it feels like, I thought. To be exactly who you are supposed to be. Then my phone buzzed on the bench. I almost ignored it. But the screen lit up with a name I knew, and my stomach did a little flip. Doreen Pike. She was our next-door neighbour at home. She was sixty-eight, and she knew everything about everyone on our street. She never called me at night. She sent birthday cards and texts about her cat. I picked up. "Doreen? Hi. Is everything okay?" "Hello, love." Her voice was too bright. It was the kind of bright people use when they are holding something heavy behind their backs. "Now, don't panic." I stopped walking. "What happened?" "Nothing awful. Your dad's had a bit of a tumble in the garden. He's awake. He's cross. He's absolutely fine." "A tumble? What kind of tumble?" "He was hanging up the washing. He just went down, love. I heard the clothes basket hit the path." She took a breath. "He's sitting at the kitchen table now. I've made him tea. But..." "But what?" She did not answer right away. The rain was still falling. The radiator behind me clanked once, loud, in the empty room. "But what, Doreen?" "He keeps looking at his hands," she said quietly. "Like they belong to somebody else." I looked down at my own hands. The blue ink on the back of my right hand was still wet. The little shape of my molecule was starting to smear at the edges. Six rings. Two chains. One tiny tail. The warm glow I had carried all evening drained out of me so fast that I felt dizzy. "Doreen," I whispered, "how long has he been shaking like that?" She did not say a word. And that silence told me everything I did not want to know. What had my father been hiding from me, and why was I the last person to find out?